all engineered friction fusing with air,
music born of friction, peaks and troughs of sound
throb in our ears

the ship slicing through waves,
opening and parting them in bowed surge
the wetted measured friction
has the waters parting, gushing, rushing round
singing in joyous roars that fill, fulfill, and enflame
basking mermaids slithering and lulling in the waves
of plunging passion

our fingertips, too, on skin, are friction
we call pleasure, touches we arch under
the language of groans and sighs also moaned friction
of heated air rasping vibrating cords
in the throat, just so

and then tensing to yes.

the pleasure of the plough plunging deep,
digging deep into gripping soil
gratefully opening up to tilling, for seeds of life
to be planted, so that in season, a rich harvest would birth

and how our voices rejoice, secret yielded as fruit
the shared complicity in
friction and pulling,
plowing, plunging and planting

and incomprehensible scribbles
on the resisting vibrating surface of the bewitched air

all need your collaboration
demanding energy to overcomethough energy would be felt,
drowned in flowing pleasures

without friction there can be no pleasure
stuttered, stalled, sullen and static
journeys without boundaries

life a languid limp limbo
resistance and restrainer
you increase work and heat
liberating positive energy in seasons of amity
but when time and pride corrode the good
and anomie sets in
and thorn weeds sprout and spike in polluted hearts
painful friction, spawn and install in stubborn heartsspout-spawning spiraling masses of negative energy,spurning joy, acerbic simmer, toxic swelters, chokingas corrosive friction multiplies and you deepen your rootsthe good begins to dissolve, the ugly enlarges

as enlarging frictions fetters and freezes the feet of amity
to resist and retard the swelling of heart
and bodies that once vibrated and throbbed as one

***And here we are, at our last piece in the fizzy feelings/fuzzy physics series and Susan and I close it here with a flourish. The theme friction is one that lends itself to diverse explorations and exploitations and we have not stinted in any way here in these and we hope you will like what we have tried to make of it!

Thanks again to Susan, my partner in poetry and co-creator, for challenge, co-inspiration and for such gorgeous use of the language!

yes, streams that crashed
and colluded
to synthesize
this synchronized turn
& counter-turn
between us

how across distancesthe color of angel robes
the bow of the sky
this awareness continuesbundles of colors at different energy levels
streaming to lighten, to loosen
a delight

past an elemental level

indefinite until measured

** As usual, It was such wonderful fun doing this duet with Susan where we explore the relevance of aspects of particle theory in physics to communication and bonding across space, place and cultures. Susan says it better in her usual eoquence in the words below. Noel

***Quantum entanglements, or the theory of, was the inspiration for this duet between my bolded friend and I (italicized). I believe it describes nicely a friendship and affinity that stretches across the globe

As always, hope you enjoy our fuzzy, fizzy exploration between particles and people — I know I had fun writing it with Noel, hope you enjoy reading it.

Whether rolling, roaming, roaring or lulling, tangible proofs
of your occasional intangible presence
we sense the voice singing you
sketching or announcing your passage
either as silent footfalls or thumping poundings
reminding us to be, that we are,
we are beings because of you,
primal mover at the beginning

and still being, celebrating and echoing the command
to be, and you are and remain
being in your bounding, binding,
pounding, driving, falling,
tumbling, stumbling, climbing

the invisible hands drawing the earth’s pull taut,
the rise in slopes, hunger also rising;
rivers rush, stream, and sing your name

and here, we pull together in equal force,
meeting and blending these shifting fields
other disciplines call spirit
but I name simply us;

a measurable magic
weighed in breath
and silent singing of neural nets
taking in and releasing

and in the heart pumping blood,
necessary and rhythmic expression of muscle
exalting, exulting, and moving

pure life energy

beating and pushing
the energy of the heart

and this energy can push, also,
the pulse of hate, the politics of rage
the power to heat up, hurt, harm
and strengthen the impulse to heal, help

raw and caged in dams, you exist, taut, waiting
leaving us free, agents with choice
to channel you for good or for bad or for bland

We draw from you the means for
tearing down or building
and weeping as our hands itch for and grasp the former

and you weep in fits at our failure and our fate.

***My co-creator Susan’s voice is in italics – mine is bolded. Again, we had so much fun with this when we created it–hope you enjoy reading it. As always, a treat to write with Susan whose energy and creativity added life and flow to what is difficult concept in physics !

Stretched out in spacetravelling and rollingnever straight, never monotone, velocity varyingin your kinks and loops,you dance backwards to lace and trap the mindsof the traveler looking backwards from the presentreaching backwards to embellish images and eventswith generous sweet strokes and paintbrushes, dripping nostalgia

We can only chart your path,a journey from now to the less-nowcolored by memory–beautiful,instructive, instinctive;more art than accuracyin the retelling. Still, we risefrom what we think shapes usto this moment, the moment now past

Our errorthe attempt to captureor predict your movements,when we should simplyplay within your loopsthat wrap us looselyand then tighten; you are trulyOuroboros,constantly swallowing your own tail

the measure of seasons, defying seasonsebbing and flowingvalue and value, always subjective, never same,the marriage of intensity, attitude ,people, person and place parade and prance in your amberproducing passion, patience and pleasurethundering and thumping

Like you, we shouldopen these mouths to swallow the pastin endless loops of hunger,taste what has beenon the way, strengthening usfor the race to what will be

** Susan has wonderfully summarised the genesis of this duet on Time in her post below! Need I say more? Except the obvious – that it is always a pleasure to sing with Susan. My voice is in bold, Susan’s is italicized!

***My duet partner caught inspiration for this jogging on the beach in Dar es Salaam; sent me his lines, and I answered from Eden. The actual time it took to write this piece together was under an hour, I believe, and I love its spontaneity and movement! Hope you do too. (Susan)

Dense with entropy, warm interplay
life’s strumming is thermal,
made in heat and made with heat
beginning in fusion and fission of stars
heat riots everywhere, all ways
stored in bonds and energy fields and folds

Heat, energy, pure warmingsource and inspirer of lifeyour touch sparks us and enflamed, we glow

our flowing emotions awakened too;
relationships are about heat energy and transfers
warm glowing when souls converse and caress
when bodies melt, flow and fuse,
the scorching joy song of molten gold passion

yes, the constant shifts within us and without us
in traded heat;radiations, convections and conductions
we conduct, we conduce the flow
nodding to the first law,
nothing made or lost, only changed
from one form to another

past vision and all senses, rearranging with
the simple harmonic motion of elements,
the inner rotation of the subatomic
like mirrored, miniature solar systems
the shift of season into season,
the pulls tides answer, and strokes of waves

all singing life
every motion has brought us
closer to this motion today
where we move in unison

your voice in mine and
mine in yours

your tongue vibrates, feels
and feeds my throat motion;
fluttering, trembling, all kinetic and stirring
and we move, the rhythm of us a motion

born of force and attraction

by polarities that pull
create this swirl, tremulous gyrations, vibrating, oscillating
where merging in vertical and horizontal flows
we reach forward and beyond
with hastening speed

and now, with vectors charting
direction, force and magnitude
this joined velocity singing and ringing
still accelerating, celebrating
the influx and efflux of creativity,
its season of release

** Our second duet on Motion! Susan and I hope you will enjoy reading this duet as much as we did writing it. Susan is italicized and Noel is bolded.

Our mother an eye, soft and smiling
a constant blue gaze unblinking,
but kind, a glowing awareness
logical in her turning;
her light beguiles and seduces
in its soft sparkling
as the moon, her hills, and blue seas
use their pulls in equations
to twirl, whirl, and swirl

Caressing and awakening the sleeping ocean
stirring, causes waves, tides, and surges
three balls hanging apart in space, moving
yet linked by invisible forces flowing from them
and causing motions and emotions to rise and ebb

And you and I, also
feel the pull, the irresistible forces
that draw our blood beneath skin,
that grasp our hands to lift and turn us
so we also spin and dance like these,
hoping that our weaker movement too
will birth waves
and pools

***Once again I thoroughly enjoyed braiding lines and interlacing voices with my duet partner, Susan, whose beautiful voice shines here and who succeeds to breathe life and plenty of movement into a difficult topics in physics – motion! Susan’s voice in italics and mine in bold!

Smiles stiff and still
not sparking eyes, sparkleless
exhausted, shambling, soulless routines once so fresh
now stale, sour, and old
constant motion long past dancing

Radius, diameter and circumference in grating logic
circling each other in yawning cycles

We roll unresisting into a heavy, unpiloted slide
remaining in these present states easier
as with each change comes resistance
which must be swept across
or persuaded into action

what is held still craves flow,though frozen and powerless
to break old bindings
and change direction

We shuffle limp on a limping highway
limp unable to rise nor flow, trudging on a treadmill
threadbare, going nowhere

The mournful sky wraps above and around us
mourning our uninspired mornings
soggy flat in colorless monochrome
borderless without hope, our soulless soles
burdened, weighty and weighed down
at the border of the deadening present and a feared future

Eager to depart, move on and move apart
and resist its own yearning,
and though we have breath and pulse, we lie inert

The half-life of what lived long past
in search of direction,
going nowhere, unable to live
unwilling to leave

With no wand to wave to will us forward
we live as hollow shells
in endless cycles of repetitions
that weep and
wait for that external force to move us
either backwards or forward,
to push us on or push us over Inertia

**While a pleasure, as always, to write with Noel, I can’t wait to move on to more dynamic physical concepts in this series we are working on

Again, Noel’s voice is not italicized, mine is. (Susan)

****Susan and I explore in this duet a concept in physics that dates back to Newton’s seminal work. Inertia is essentially about the inability of an entity for internally generated change and movement in the absence of external impetus. It is a great joy to feel how in this duet we have been able discover some life and truths about life in Inertia! Always a pleasure to sing with Susan and to feel her voice, soft and delicate, blend with mine, gruff and often strident! (Noel)

I want to ride this wavesuspended in stroking flow, the way a childrocks to sleep at night, body rememberingthe forward shove, the dragging back

The mind surveys, questions the source
the ends, the purpose and where they end
this timeless travel, unceasing pulling
Constant pushing and tugging

Your mind brushes infinity, reflectedIn a wave with no beginningthat never breaks, but meets invisible resistanceand release in reactive crests and peaks;The raw push forward, still with softness,Rocking and wrapping everything that swimswithin light, inside water, coiled inside sound;all the patterned peaks and troughs that invite and incitewith throb and force, always present within a wave–should we resist or should we swim inside its logic

There is a logic to its heaves
the pull of the moon
stirring tides, stirring blood surges and longings
in its genteel stare bewitching

Let it come, let us call it forth–summon it to strike and shapethe substance of song and sighs;the drag of magnets siphoning bitterness,drawing pure substance to pure substance,energy flowing forward without resistance.

The waves moving, endless motion,
the to and fro of each wave,
each wave inching deeper and closer
moving us and the world with it

If waves are change, let this one birth a tsunami to crushand carry away the proudthe assured who stand opposedbut a wave that can with tenderness lift up,splash and cleanse thosewho gently cling at her rolling hems, hide their facesin her soft skirts

Let us then ride and roll on her foaming wings
as the world rolls and spins
and advances in its waves of ether
moving always and the world forward

***Trying a little something different here with Susan, my duet partner, in a series where we explore the possible applications and implications of concepts from physics to life, living and feelings. Susan’svoice is the one italicized, and Mine is the one not. As always, it was a pleasure to co-create with Susan and to blend my voice with hers!

Who would ever have believed that the Okoye Brothers (Paul and Peter – PSquare) had this amount of influence, and that the influence extended even to the highest citizen of the land? That is the power of artists – their influence can be so insidious that we often internalize their messages without our being conscious that such internalization is going on. General Buhari’s recent 97% and 5% talk is a classic example.

PSquare sang: “if you do me, I do you, God no go vex” and the General must have taken the message in this modern day rendition of a mosaic injunction to heart as a guiding philosophy of life. This guiding philosophy then found a convenient outlet in the 97% and 5% comment. Never mind that the mathematics is wrong. Never mind that the forum chosen to express this personal philosophy of governance and political payback (with commonly owned assets) was the worst. The comment is no slip of the tongue. It is a comment that swells from deep within. It defines the man and it tells us what to expect in the coming months and years. Such a comment is most unworthy of any statesman or national leader. It betrays pettiness. It betrays vengefulness. It also betrays a regrettable and fundamental sectionalism. It is thus a public relation and governance disaster. It is a tasteless howler. The timing for this latest howler is also most appropriate. It happened in the public glare of spectators who had come to watch a sales and image laundering exercise. The gaffe turned it indirectly into a media disaster, an apt exercise in self-revelation/disclosure and a true commentary on one’s competence, social vision, and intellectual depth. In a single blow, the 97% and 5% gaffe thus gave a lie to all the hype and posturing of image launderers, scattering them all as “wash” in full public glare.

The French novelist, Victor Hugo said–“Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come”. Let me end this short piece by inflicting on the reader a very mischievous adaptation of that same saying. Here goes – “Nothing is as inevitable as a disaster whose time has come”. I am sure that Mr. Hugo would agree that this adaptation rhymes well with our present charade and that it fits the current parade of governance clumsiness like a glove.

It is amazing how much we can “ACHIEVE” when we define our targets with such looseness and when we bring down the bar of metrics to very low points. When we do that, waking up becomes an achievement and brushing one’s teeth becomes a super achievement. In a climate of loose definitions and lowered expectations, leaders in search of achievements to celebrate do not need look too far. Visiting a school becomes an achievement. Receiving a group of citizens is celebrated with the same panache reserved for the discovery of a new economic theory. It should therefore not surprise that our new kid on the block has ACHIEVED so much because of the slack targets & loose indicators that his media team and supporters have been and are still pushing for him. But those who must claim or sell achievements should first read up impact, causal theory, logic models and attribution theory. Claiming trivia and the mundane as achievements simply trivializes serious business and the claimants. Worse still, claiming responsibility for the success of events conceptualized, planned, nursed and “ante-natal cared’ for by another before your arrival is plagiarism. Hoha!